SOund Navigation And Ranging (SONAR) is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate or to detect other vessels in water. Active sonar transmits a pulse of sound, often called a “ping”, and then listens for reflections of the pulse. Distance may be determined using transmission/reception delay. Several hydrophones may be used to measure relative times of arrival to determine a relative bearing using beam-forming.
Sonar systems use transducers to transmit and receive sound signals. Previous attempts to optimize response characteristics have used transmit/receive switch and diodes circuits with a common transducer. This has resulted in undesirably complicated and costly systems. Thus, it is desirable to provide a single transducer that is well suited to both transmit and receive signals in sonar applications.